And Fortuna Smiles
by Liathel
Summary: Tenten does indeed have another hobby besides sharp, pointy and potentially lethal weapons. Call it divination, call it fortune-telling. She calls it a lot of fun. Neji calls it a bother. Oh, and Lee has a blast with it. Gai just laughs. A little, (mostly) funny and fluffy introspection on Team Gai (mostly Tenten though, it's HER hobby!), with a side of NejiTen.
1. Prologue

****Hi there!

My New Year's Resolution was actually to finally pick up on my other stories (here and the Reader-Inserts over at dA) but as we all know, New Year's Resolutions are meant to be broken anyway, two days after is a new record for me though...

But damnit, New Year's Eve and stupid party customs decided I just HAD to start on this story I've been thinking about for some time, because Kishimoto actually GAVE Tenten some character depth and wrote down somewhere (probably on New Year's Eve) that she likes fortune-telling.

So I present to you: Tenten's fun (and Team Gai's horror) with Fortune-Telling! Or, because it's better-sounding: And Fortuna Smiles

Enjoy!

* * *

**Be extremely subtle, even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious, even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate.**

—_Sun Tzu_

Sometimes Tenten wished she brought soap bubbles to the training area.

"Why are you giggling to yourself, Tenten?" Neji drawled from his position under the dummy post, but his eyes remained closed so the girl knew he wasn't really bothered by her little display of lunacy.

Biting down on her lip she suppressed any other random thoughts from bubbling to the surface of her bored mind. Bubbling…Soap bubbles…

"Tenten?"

She hastily caught herself and tried to hide the giggles with a cough.

"Sorry Neji, just having poetic thoughts about soap and the sunset…"

The Hyuuga grunted out a noncommittal "Hn" but still kept his eyes closed and his posture relaxed.

"You should not think during meditation, Tenten. It is an exercise to cleanse your mind off wordly troubles not for coming up with nonsensical ideas."

Tenten let herself fall back to lie in the grass, still warm from the early summer sun, which was now slowly fading below the horizon. It had been a long day of training and not even Neji could blame her for getting distracted by doing something more interesting than "not thinking".

"Whatever you say, Neji. But you know, if you got troubles it'd be better to try and actively solve them than trying to force them out of your mind. That way they will only accumulate and come back to bite you in the butt one day. And they will have merged and evolved into a monster of Gai-worthy intensiveness…"

She had to bite her lip again to stop herself from another giggle fit at the mental image of a blob-monster with bushy eyebrows trying to consume a petrified Neji, while mumbling "troubleeeee!". Yep, definitely time to call it a day.

Finally the Hyuuga boy opened his pale eyes to stare at his female teammate in bewilderment. Or as close as Neji ever got to such an emotion.

"Tenten, I'm not talking about actual, vital problems. Those have been dealt out by fate and have to be adequately reacted to, as you have taught me."

This got the girl to sit up again and blink at her partner in actual bewilderment.

"Aren't you in a chatty mood right now, Hyuuga."

Neji simply raised an eyebrow at her before he got up and dusted off his pants before offering Tenten a hands up.

"I simply wish to inform you of your misunderstanding before you try to force another of your so-called "educational demonstrations of how fate can be influenced by humans" on me. I have no problems!"

Tenten pulled herself to her feet with the boy's help and gave him a sour smile.

"Liar. And I believe I called it "Stop talking about birds, you idiot. I'm gonna tell you what birds have to say about your fate!""

"Actually you used a whole lot more swear words, but…"

"Whatever, bird-brain! I get it. You have no problems, none at all. I'll still bring my cards to tomorrow's team meeting!"

The Hyuuga stopped dead in his tracks and Tenten had to tip back onto her heels to avoid colliding with the taller boy. Slowly Neji turned his most intimidating look on her, the one which was not quite a glare but bordered on promises full of pain.

"No."

Neji resumed walking, faster this time and Tenten suspected he wanted to get away with his word being the last before she pestered him with her idea.

"Fat chance! Now I'm totally bringing them!" She called after the retreating Hyuuga and she could have sworn she saw him flinch slightly, but he did not turn around to dissuade her from the notion anyway.

Humming she resumed her own way home, scooping up her pack on the way out of the field, soap bubbles now the farthest thing from her mind, because tomorrow would once again be a "educational demonstration" of how just the right words at the right time to the right person could help shape their own perception.

Especially if you knew your customer as well as Tenten did her boys. And her tarot cards.

Lee would have a blast (again). And maybe Neji would smile at her badly disguised insinuations at his fate-obsession in their Genin days. And maybe, just maybe, this would (once again) make him forget his "not there"-troubles.

* * *

**Next up: **Augury

Oh and just so you know: I'm not a professional at fortune-telling, so some of the stuff I looked up, the other things I knew and most of it is artistic freedom, 'k? 'k


	2. Augury

Hi! So here we go, first chapter and it's basically a flash-back already, because I wanted to clear up that "Bird-thing" from the prologue...^^

Just a short pointer about Augury/Auspices: It's a really tricky subject and I'm really thankful Wikipedia offered me this quote I was looking for, because otherwise I'd have had to translate it from latin into german and then into english and that would have been a mess, so yeah.

The quote also gives a good impression of how Augury was percieved back in the day, I'm no expert as I said before but we talked about it in high school greek and latin classes a lot... Basically Augury is not really "seeing the future", it's more about "seeing if whatever you want to do will work", so before you ask the birds, your decision must already be made... Or something, it's difficult to explain...

That's why the concept itself is not very strictly covered in this story, it's more about the impact it has on the characters...

Enjoy anyway!

* * *

_'Come then,' Tarquin said angrily, 'Deduce when they make up in bed, if your augury can, whether what I have in my mind right now is possible.' And when Navius, expert in augury that he was, immediately said that it would happen, Tarquin replied: 'Well, I thought that you would cut a whetstone with a sharp knife. Here, take this and do what your birds have predicted would be possible.' And Navius, hardly delaying at all, took the whetstone and cut it._

**—Livy, 1.35.2**

The girl in the pink tunic was fuming. She bent down to pick up yet another wayward kunai with more anger than it should be possible to put into such a simple motion, but somehow she pulled it off to even stash the weapon away with rage without ever losing control of the pointy device.

She threw a glance over her shoulder at the long-haired boy standing not ten feet away, but of course he wasn't even looking in her direction. That god-damn, stuck-up, prissy Hyuuga Genius! Had he looked he would have seen her masterful handle on her weapons, but no. He was a genius, he was a Hyuuga and thought it was better to spent his time watching birds, apparently.

They hadn't been on a team for long, about two months maybe and Tenten liked the boy less every day she had to spend with him, which were quite a lot as her friend and teammate Lee decided to forsake her to the Heavenly Hands of the white-eyed boy to spend more time with their sensei.

Bustling along the field she let her thoughts wander while picking up the rest of her weapons on autopilot.

She could hardly blame Lee, though she was still a little cross their friendship seemed to mean so little to him, Gai-sensei was a bit intense for Tenten's liking but he took Lee more seriously than any other adult ever had before and she could not begrudge him that.

Sadly that got her stuck with a boy she could probably trade in for a stone and no one would know the difference, except she supposed she could at least beat a stone. Hopefully.

Huffing and still a little angry, though it was kind of anti-climatic to glare at someone who hadn't said anything about your hissy-fit in a full ten minutes, she trudged up to the still Hyuuga boy.

"What now? You wanna go again?" She asked crossly.

The dark-haired boy didn't even so much as glance at her and rather addressed the flock of birds, sailing across the blue spring-skies.

"No it would be futile to continue this session as there is nothing you could do to help either of us improve."

Now she had a new reason to glare at him.

"What do you know about my skills, Hyuuga? The birds tell you that?"

Slightly confused pale eyes now deemed her worthy of attention.

Ah, sarcasm, a weapon almost as sharp as a kunai and often more useful to garner a response.

"I don't see what birds have to do with anything. It is a simple matter of fate. No matter what you do, you cannot change your destined path, which has been set the first time you lost to me."

All she could do was gape at him. Did he get out on the wrong side of the bed this morning? Or was he just simply angsting in his grandeur-fashion again? Either way the girl decided she didn't care. This was the last straw.

She swore under her breath and apparently he had heard her, or he had heard the snapping as her patience ripped free of the thread tying it to her temper, because he only raised a challenging eyebrow.

Calm, she needed to be calm enough to get her scathing thoughts into a semblance of order.

"Dude," Okay, that may have been a bad start, but at least she hadn't screamed at him.

Apparently, Hyuuga Neji didn't get called "Dude" very often, because he now looked at her with something akin to indignation in his eyes.

So Tenten decided to up the ante even more.

"Listen up, pal. And listen well!" Breathing in again, she finally snagged the one thought, which had been fighting to reach her neo cortex.

"First off: Decide on one already! Which is it: Fate or Destiny?"

When he actually opened his mouth to respond she shushed him with her best "The teacher's talking now"-look.

"Because you keep on blabbering how everything's set in stone for everyone and frankly that's bullshit. Fate might give you the notion of predetermination but….that's actually exactly what "fate" entails, damn. But LISTEN to yourself, boy! You keep saying "It was destined…blahblahblah." And you know what? THAT'S WRONG! Destiny…Destiny entails so much more! Sure, no human may be destined to fly, but Destiny is full of possibilities! Maybe you cannot change it, much like you cannot change the fact you can't become a bird, but you influence it through your decisions! And unless the birds told you so, I won't let you decide on my destiny as it is, because I don't believe in fate. Unless you're a rock. Then you're fated to your way of life."

Tenten had to give the boy some credit, he didn't even step away from her, he only blinked twice. Having let off most of her steam she benevolently decided to answer the questions she decided she saw in his eyes.

She pointed at the slowly disappearing flock of wild geese, because no other species ever made this much noise while flying.

"I noticed you always observing the birds, Hyuuga. Why? They cannot tell you your destiny. They're birds, you dimwit! They can only tell you whether your decision was the right one. And even if they tell you "no" you still made that decision and even if it fails, it opens a whole new load of possibilities to pick from and then you can ask the birds again."

They watched in silence as the last of the grey-feathered animals disappeared together with the last sunrays over the treetops. Long, crimson-flooded shadows crawled toward them and finally the bun-haired girl decided to take pity on the stupefied prodigy.

"So stop staring at birds and DO SOMETHING first before asking them. And if you got trouble understanding their message, come ask me. I think I've got a book about auspices somewhere…"

On a spur of the moment, she clapped her teammate on the back before jogging up to her back, tossing the gathered weapons inside and hurrying off.

After she was gone, the petrified Hyuuga slowly walked up to his own discarded bag, slowly picked it up and wandered home through the still growing shadows.

The guards at the Compound's entrance wisely decided to keep shut when the dazed boy trotted past them and pretended to overhear the genius as he slowly approached the aviary in the front yard, opened the door of the metal cage and mumbled:

"Show me your destiny, you feather-brains!"

* * *

**OMAKE**

Years later, when Tenten had long memorized all the possible and impossible patterns a flock could apparently fly in and what they told you depending on the nature of your decision and the kind of bird it was, and Neji had long outgrown his obsession with predetermination, Tenten remembered something.

"You know, Neji…" She panted when the Hyuuga stopped spinning and they stopped their training for a short break.

"Hn?"

Tenten set down her water bottle and inhaled deeply, pointing to a flock of wild geese, going south for winter.

"Remember that time I told you about augury?"

"Hn?" Slowly the boy put down his water bottle too, dreading yet another session of "Watching Birds with Tenten and all the random facts about local wildlife, you really didn't want to know"

"Remember when I said fate was bullshit, except if you were a rock?"

"Yes…I think?"

"I actually intended to specifically tell you I didn't mean Lee. Because that's totally what you thought I meant, when you replayed that conversation in your head during meditation, right?"

"…No"

"Liar!"

* * *

**Up next: **Ceromancy

Be warned: It involves slightly psychological undercurrents and non-explicit torture with wax but the end is somehow very positive (as is Tenten throughout the whole plot… weird…)

Butbutbut! The chapter after that will be happier, even funny (well at least to me it is...) and have a healthy dose of NejiTen in it! Promise!


	3. Ceromancy

First off, what you make of this is totally up to you. I'm aware this is not detailed or specific in any way, but what I wanted to capture was how people saw what Tenten did and what she actually wanted to achieve with it.

For a little more info, see the bottom of this chapter, otherwise I'd spoil it for you…

Besides, I'm not really happy at how this turned out. In the original version there was a whole part about Tenten's introspection on the whole deal but I cut it out to keep it as confusing as it's meant to be... So, not my best chapter...

So, just to be safe:

**WARNING AGAIN**: Even though there is nothing explicit (and I'm quite sure I don't have to upload this as 'M' rated) this involves non-specific torture (no blood, guts or whatever, it's more psychological)

If this is not your cup of tea, just wait until the next one, it's going to be fluffy and cute and funny and all those things I really have difficulties writing... We'll see...

* * *

_We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one._

**—Aristotle**

He opened a bleary eye when the door was pushed open almost soundlessly and shrunk back into his hard-backed chair immediately. It was her again.

Slowly the woman sashayed over, pure white silken skirts swishing around her legs and over the floor gently, hypnotically.

She had brought light again. After the complete and utter darkness of the last few -…what had it been? Hours? Days? Weeks? He couldn't tell any more- his eyes hurt from the warm glow of the candle.

But hers were alight, not only from the flame but from a sincerity, a sweetness that shone from her whole face, so pale, like porcelain, so calm. He began to tremble.

"Hello!" She chirped and he winced from the abnormally loud and cheerful sound, which didn't belong here at all. He never responded, he only stared at her, wide-eyed as she put down the red candle next to the cold relics of its predecessors, seven in all.

"I see you're finally aware again? How do you feel? Willing to tell me some things?"

She continued and sat down in front of his chair, cross-legged, her feet disappearing underneath her billowing silk robe.

When he didn't react, she sighed and shook her head, her hair-buns swaying slightly in the process. It was hypnotic, he had been fascinated by her hair-do since her first visit.

She smiled as she picked up the candle again and he started straining against the chains binding him to his seat almost purely on instinct. They wouldn't break, no matter what he did.

"I'll let you in on a secret of my own, since you were so cooperative last time. They don't want me to wear my hair up when I visit you, because it could give away my identity too easily should we meet again outside. It's a salient cue, that's what Inoichi-senpai says, you could remember. But I don't care, because I like being me. Because what we do here is not wrong, is it? I'm trying to help you, don't you agree? There is nothing for me to be ashamed of when I leave, you see?"

She had stepped closer and he hadn't even noticed, because her voice was so sweet, so pure and without falsity to it. Slowly she held up the candle to his hollow right cheek. He started crying soundlessly.

"Now then… What shall we look for today? Oh yes…."

She pressed the candle closer to his face and tipped it slightly, hot wax dripping on his bare shoulder, which didn't even hurt anymore. Still he bit down on his lip.

Slowly she drew her finger down over his shoulder, taking the quickly cooling wax with her, across his exposed chest in a queer pattern.

"Hm… Today I want you to look for your comrade, who escaped, again. Do you remember when we looked for him yesterday? Poor fellow had fallen prey to his injury and was hallucinating…Tsk, tsk!"

Her hand hit his chin lightning fast and he whimpered but didn't dare move again, she would get angry and he didn't want her angry, she would hurt him, if she got angry!

Still, he wondered, when the pain started seeping through every pore of his body from the symbol drawn on his torso in blood red wax, if this was worth placating this woman, this diviner.

He had never told her a single word about his mission, his comrade, about the injury he received. And still, she knew. And even though this hurt, it was not torture. The burns on his skin would be gone the next time she came back and then she would do it again. And every time she knew more than the last, she was slowly zeroing in on the core of his mission, this beautiful, kind creature, who was now softly singing to him in a language he didn't understand. Time passed as he closed his eyes.

The burning on his skin intensified and his whole body convulsed in a moment of shock. The singing stopped and then there was a sting on his face again as she slapped him.

"Open your eyes! Look at me! Isn't that fantastic? Isao will find his way back to your campsite! I'm sure he will make it through the night at this rate! And tomorrow we could have him here, right next to you. Wouldn't you like that?"

She beamed at him and skipped over to the small shelf containing soap and a clean washcloth.

He bit down on his lip again to stop himself from asking her how she knew his partner's name. She had hurt him the last time he had questioned her methods.

Slowly, methodically she set to work, cleaning his skin of the red wax, leaving only marks almost as red, which she then carefully sprinkled with oil, soothing and cold.

She left the candle burning on the ground, next to its brothers' remains, and left the room without another word, like always.

Ibiki looked up from the log book he kept on the prisoner, when Tenten stepped out of the cell again.

"Well?" He asked as the young woman trotted over, remorse once again written over her whole face.

She threw him a tired glance and pointed at one of the pins on the large map.

"His name is Isao and he should be somewhere in a five mile radius around that location we potentially supposed before…"

She started stripping off the white silk dress and the older man tactfully turned around and studied the map on the table and the row of red candles next to it.

When Tenten finished changing back into her dark blue and green vested standard ninja outfit, tugging the short sleeve down over the spiral tattoo on her left shoulder, and stepped up next to him, she saw the frown on his scarred face again.

"What is it, senpai?" Tiredly she swung herself onto the table, kicking her legs and taking one of the candles into her hand, turning it over and over in abstract fascination.

Ibiki coughed and took the candle out of her hands almost gently, before resuming his intent staring at the map.

"I know I have no right to ask you, how. Because everyone of us has his or her very own methods and in this business, everyone likes keeping their advantages to themselves. But allow me to ask, why?"

Tenten blinked at the leader of the interrogation squad in honest confusion.

"Why?"

The burly man now turned his stare from the map to the woman, no, _girl_, sitting next to it.

"Why are you so good at this? I know why you do it, that much you made clear when Gai introduced you to us, but I have never once felt you use a jutsu in there. All you ever do is draw on them with wax. It doesn't hurt and you aren't cruel. Why are you still able to garner information, which we cannot even access with our best mind-readers?"

Later, Ibiki resumed, he shouldn't have been as surprised by her answering smile, as he was in that moment. She always smiled, even at her victims.

"It's the same answer as to the other "Why", senpai."

At his expectant glare, she hopped off the table and patted his arm on her way out.

"Because everybody has a future and someone has to see to it."

The man named Isao was caught the next day, exactly where Tenten had predicted.

* * *

Well, there you have it. I'm a weirdo for writing about wax torture under an occult light, I know. But as soon as I decided on the quote for this chapter, I really really wanted to do a ANBU!Tenten-tortures-someone-while-fortune-telling!Fic.

And whether she really divined that information or whether it was a combination of guessing, psychology and drugs (I'm tempted to write more ANBU!Tenten without esoteric stuff mixed in…) I leave up to your imagination.

Next chapter's going to be funny and fluffy again and I really don't think I'll write a dark-themed story for this here again… It just doesn't fit…

**Up next: **Alectryomancy (or: The power of the chicken!)


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